Rites of passage

The term rite of passage was first used in anthropology to encapsulate rituals that symbolize the transition of an individual or a group from one status to another, or to denote the passage of calendrical time, but soon it was embraced in other disciplines. The concept was developed by the Durkheimian anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep in Les Rites de passage (1909), in which he explored the nature of ceremonies that mark personal or collective changes of identity (childbirth, puberty, marriage, motherhood, and death), as well as collective celebrations of seasonal change (Easter, harvest). Van Gennep identified three phases in these rites: (1) separation, when the individual or the group is distanced from their former identities; (2) liminality, the phase in between two conditions (the one from which the individual/group departs and the one which they will enter); and (3) reaggregation (or incorporation), the final stage in which the individual/group is readmitted to society as bearer of new status. Because rites of passage belong to sacred time (not the profane of everyday life), their performance is formalized. The initiate(s) are placed in a symbolically subordinate position vis-à-vis those who have been initiated (elders, married, mothers) and have to go through elaborate “trials” (isolation, humiliation, fasting) before they are accepted back into the community. The flexibility ...